Reply #38: thanks for elaborating [View All]

[marions ghost]

what you are saying rings true to me. I think you put your finger on it with the reference to feelings of personal shame and 'blame the victim' mentality --as being behind some of the ostrich syndrome involved in clinging to the discredited idea that Saddam had WMD.

Your 'Kerry is as bad as Bush' example is a perfect illustration about how this emotional underpinning works to produce some really warped thinking. And as you say the rightwing propaganda mill knows their constituency well... shame is a powerful form of social control.

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Here are some basic insights on the topic of shame and how it can play into social psychology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame

To shame is to induce shame in others by attacking or destroying the personal dignity of a person or a group. Shame can be induced verbally by ridicule, name-calling or publicly exposing a person's or a groups vulnerability or weakness; and physically by assault, rape, and beating. Shaming actions attack and diminish the human dignity of a person or group and separates them from the human family.

When someone says "You ought to be ashamed of yourself", they often mean that the target did something that they believe, rightly or wrongly, to be shameful. Sometimes shortened to "Shame on you." this form of shaming shames the target as a human being, rather than the deed itself.

Shaming attacks human dignity. Since shame is a complicated and often taboo condition, people often confuse shame with guilt when they shame others. In addition, for those who care about human dignity, it is always important to separate false condemnation from genuine guilt as specious shame is often used as form of relational aggression against innocent people.

Self shame

It is also possible to self-shame with genuine or false forms of self-condemnation. Brian Moore in his novel Black Robe, later shown graphically in the film version, shows a Catholic priest who flagellates himself for having forbidden desires. Another form of self-shaming occurs in people who connect their internal self-worth with external conditions as in "I lost, therefore, I am a loser.", 'He rejected me, therefore, I am no good.', or "We were hit by a tidal wave, therefore, we were wrong". Because self-shame often depends on internalized ideologies of shamed vs shameless self-hood, it is often a powerful but covert form of religious, legal, or social control that begins in childhood .

Self-shaming can be internalized as an identity following abuse. A person can feel his dignity has been permanently lost, either by being a member of a group that is socially stigmatized or by experiencing abuse or ridicule. Children are especially vulnerable to formation of a self-shaming identity during their development.